Dive into the transformative power of nature with Meilin Ehlke as she uncovers how connecting with plants and the elements boosts vitality, well-being, and creativity. Explore the healing benefits of breathwork, organic materials in architecture, and sustainable landscape design practices. Discover how mindful engagement with nature can enhance your connection and overall well-being.
Meilin Ehlke stressed the significance of interior design in improving air quality, advocating for the use of organic materials and innovative architectural solutions to create healthier living spaces.
Three key takeaways from the episode are:
1. **Mindful Engagement with Nature:** Ehlke encouraged listeners to engage with nature mindfully, both indoors and outdoors, to nurture a deeper connection and overall well-being.
2. **Innovative Interior Design:** She highlighted the importance of using organic materials and promoting air flow in interior spaces to create environments that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also conducive to health and wellness.
3. **Community and Sustainable Practices:** Ehlke advocated for community involvement and sustainable practices in landscape design to support local ecosystems and foster harmony with nature.
A poignant quote from the episode that resonated deeply was, "An invitation to ponder and a curiosity of what is coming to be new." This quote encapsulates the essence of exploring the unknown and embracing the transformative power of nature.
Throughout the episode, Ehlke shared insights on the importance of aligning architecture with local microclimates, using organic materials in construction, and implementing ancient planting techniques to create harmonious relationships with nature. By engaging with nature in a holistic and intentional manner, individuals and communities can not only enhance their well-being but also contribute to a more sustainable and harmonious world.
(00:02:03) Healing Power of Plants and Elements
(00:09:57) Nature-inspired Breathwork for Well-being and Creativity
(00:12:08) Enhancing Air Quality Through Innovative Design
(00:15:20) Harmonious Community Engagement for Sustainable Landscapes
00:00:07 - Meilin Ehlke
Moving to oneness, nourishing curiosity, embracing differences, becoming One.
A beautiful golden glow is outside. The setting sun is being reflected by the first yellowish, orangey, ochre leaves outside. It has been so beautifully warm. It's the last days of summer vacation here in Bavaria, Germany. It brings a calmness, a peacefulness, because this warmth that's also reflected from the ground. It provides comfort and stimuli. So I have the door open to let in that light. I also have to look at it the whole time as I'm speaking to you now.
00:01:18 - Meilin Ehlke
So, hello, everyone. I'm Meilin Ehlke, your host of the Moving to Oneness podcast. So, I'm not just letting the light in, it's also that rustling of the leaves. There's a breeze coming through, sometimes more gently, sometimes a little stronger. It has been here the whole day. I've been chatting with the wind. But this playfulness, there is a playfulness of change, an invitation to ponderous and a curiosity of what is coming to be new. Right? Because a lot of greens are also changing at the moment. And here and there, they all getting a yellowish tone.
00:02:22 - Meilin Ehlke
And then further back, you see the dark greens and the lushness. That's amazing, this lushness of the shadow, the juxtaposition of light that creates a depth, a distance. There is a flow.
And in here, in my room, I also have house plants. I do love them because I love also that flow, right? So it can go in and out. It's like these waves that go in and out. They're relating to the plants outside, as I am, but they're also relating with me in here, and they each other with each other. Right. And sometimes I have darker and lighter ones next to each other, so they juxtapose each other's beauty. And I can touch them.
00:02:56 - Meilin Ehlke
I also go outside, and maybe you as well, you're being drawn by the plants, you're invited by them to touch them, right? To feel the coolness. And maybe you go outside now, and the first leaves are on the ground, and you hear and feel the crushing, the crumble under your feet, and you feel the magnetism of the ground and earth, and it's providing a little oomph to your body. But especially when you cannot go outside, you can touch the plants indoors, right? And you go in relationship because they have the memory of the plants outside.
And sometimes, as I'm looking at the greens and trying to explain you the colors, in painting we don't have so many dark green, light green, yeah, yellowish green, blue green, then olive green, emerald green. I don't know, maybe you can think about a few more. And too bad we don't have in our language many more. There's a native american language that has 300 words for green. Can you imagine that? The nuances. Plants are so important in our life. So, it's important to be more detailed, more precise. Right? I have an aloe vera that has a little bit of this milky bluish gray tone. I really like that. I have a few colors, plants of that, and also plants that have several colors on their leaves.
00:04:41 - Meilin Ehlke
Na ja, you know me as a landscape architect and painter, and loving texture, you understand that, but it brings vibrancy. It creates also this change from, that I experience, outdoors to the inside. It revitalizes me. It provides creativity and may do that for you as well. What kind of plants do you have in your home? Right? It's medicine for you, for me, for our children. And it's like a friend.
00:05:16 - Meilin Ehlke
I cannot always go outside and play and inhale the fullness of our beautiful planet. But then sometimes I have the plants right here and I can touch them. You know, when I invite guests, you always see me sitting next to the yucca, because it's like a support team. And when I record with you all the trees outside, they go into relation with me and also provide the information that is being spoken, the healing that has been sent to you, the energy of them.
But the wind also takes the energy, right? It takes it around. So, I invite you to bring your ideas, your beautiful energy that you take in through the air. Maybe you hold your air and then you exhale, and you have gone also into an exchange and provided your wisdom into that air particle. And you send it out. We send it out, and the wind picks it up and carries it around this beautiful earth. I think that's just amazing. Think about it. The wind has touched all of us, has touched you, has touched me, and who knows who else, and brings the ideas and emotions, wisdom to someone else that I don't know. That you don't know. Isn't that fascinating? If you think about it? Yeah. So you see, it's so important that we are nourished that our body is feeling vibrant.
00:07:04 - Meilin Ehlke
So, if you go outside, you feel the grass, the earth under your feet, you can touch a tree stem, you can lean against it, sit on a stem, you can touch a flower, you can touch leaves, and you get information, and it creates a spark, a tingle within you, but the wind as well, it creates this brushing on your skin, and it tingles. You like it was tingling and playing with the leaves of the tree a second ago. Now it's rather quiet. There's barely something moving the tops of the tree.
00:07:43 - Meilin Ehlke
And then bird flies right there, a butterfly there. So many things are being carried by it. And also, you know, the energy of the plants, they attract you. So, when you go for a walk, they push you forward or they can pull you. So, maybe you want to experience that once. That's how our ancestors walked much quicker than we do nowadays, because they let themselves be pooled by an ancient tree, rock or other plants. Oh, it almost sounds like in the book, Eragon, right? But it is so true. Or, you know, if you run or walk and you feel heavy and it's difficult, invite the earth, the plants behind you, to push you forward. So it's a wave that picks you up and moves you. There's a whole different way of walking. You need much less energy.
00:08:43 - Meilin Ehlke
And a few times in my life I've experienced it in a big way, but on a regular basis. If I go into the woods, into the forest, I can feel it. Once I go into connection with the landscape, then I'm lifted up and I can move easier, faster, and, you know, I have spasms, so I go with a limp, normally not faster than others, but in these moments, then I can pass many people. It's an amazing experience. So try it out. Try it out. And maybe when you're on the ocean on the sand, so then you have maybe the rocks that push you on the sand, or maybe you're lucky and you have sand that comes from the muscles, and then their energy moves you forward because you go into connection with the material and the history and what does the ground tell you? So next time, maybe when you go outside, you have the ability to stand outside and take a deep breath, feel with your soles of your feet what information is being given to you.
00:09:57 - Meilin Ehlke
And as you inhale and exhale, take in the breath and let it go through your body all the way up to your head and down to your toes and back up and then out. You take a new breath and you look how it feels like and how you expand and every cell of your body goes into an exchange. Maybe you cannot go outside, maybe open a window in the morning or in the evenings, or when you feel a little sluggish and breathe in that information, this liveliness, this air, because what also happens, what you have maybe hidden deep inside, can percolate then upward.
00:10:49 - Meilin Ehlke
It's like, again, a gas can percolate up. So it is the air that is rising high and can be picked up by the wind and being brought somewhere else. That's how we meet the beings we need to meet or that they come into our life. Right. Sometimes telepathically, sometimes through the wind, or it goes down through the ground. There's so many other ways how we communicate long distance. Think about it. Yeah. And let in that air into your home.
00:11:27 - Meilin Ehlke
We were talking about that the plants liven up your room, but the air also needs to flow and so that these plants can get enough oxygen and you and your children and the elderly. And it becomes more and more difficult because the windows are getting tighter and tighter. It's more energy efficient, yeah for heating. But I remember when I had to move out of a house, a guy came in and looked at the energy efficiency the older home. He said it was better that the older windows had little cracks and nooks, right. So that air could come in on a regular basis and were not too tightly shut.
00:12:08 - Meilin Ehlke
And maybe when we are in office rooms, right. How can get the air in? We're breathing old air. It goes through this metal tunnels out. Maybe you're lucky you have air condition. But some countries, like in Germany, who has air conditioning? Almost no one. So let's maybe also design again or build for air circulation.. If you're an architect or interior designer or builder, can we build homes that let air circulate in a better way and not have squares. Roundness would be better. There was a beautiful school built recently in India in the desert, out of limestone or whatever stone they used, it looked a little lime, and it had two ovals next to each other.
And the windows were so built that the air got drawn in to cool the whole school. And a huge courtyard, open courtyard outside, so that the children were always in there. And I think too many of our children are not outdoors enough where they can learn through movement how to calculate.
00:13:20 - Meilin Ehlke
Yeah. You can do sports to get their body fit so they can live for a long time and be creative. It's so important that more and more of children are being given the opportunity that they can try things out. Be creative. I think. Wasn't it recently, Finland number one. They don't give grades. They send the children outdoors to climb and ponder and observe nature and bring back inside their thoughts and ideas. Or maybe they even have classrooms outdoors. Right. So questions are created and possibility is seen and solution can be pondered. So important. So I invite you, how can you bring outdoor inside and inside more to the outside? Started now with a few kitchens we're doing outside, right. But maybe also planting more shrubs outside or trees to create the landscape that is in the microclimate of where you live.
00:14:27 - Meilin Ehlke
And also create an architecture again, that is suitable for the microclimate where you live in. I'm going to use an example. I lived once in Switzerland, and each state there has very specific architecture. So you know where you are just by looking at the architecture. And it is related to the microclimate of an alpine region. Some have more stone, some others are wood. And nowadays I think most of the buildings being built, they all look alike, made out of similar material and not very healthy material often. So indoors, what can you do? Use organic paint, use organic material that every furniture here in your house becomes a medicine or new clothing.
00:15:20 - Meilin Ehlke
Think about these things and bring them into your daily discussions. Maybe for others. So maybe you know someone who's able to create with their new product or the new service what they do, a more optimal way of doing things. It doesn't have to change totally, but if there's an improvement on a regular basis, toward the better. Like the planting of your yard. We're seeing now, because people want to live in this harmony and relationship and balance with nature.
00:15:54 - Meilin Ehlke
They don't want that heat all the time, right? So they have to plant in ancient ways. They cannot just plant the way they've done here in Germany and transplanted like into the Sahara doesn't work. There you have to let the leaves drop. One, two years, then there's enough hummus and worms can build up, humidity is built up, and then the plants that are of that region can thrive. Or recently they did like half moon, almost like the branded out crops that I got to know in Atlanta or Georgia, I should say, where the water is collected and doesn't run off and can stay there for a while and feed the roots of the saplings.
00:16:42 - Meilin Ehlke
And then the later the tree. And that is being done now and very, very successful. So we really have to look also. How do we interact with the landscape, with the plants, with the earth to create that change that we desire? It's not just only us human beings to thrive for enlightenment, but we are invited to go into action. Like the rustles of the trees when the wind comes, invites them to play with them, with him, the wind or her. 'Der Wind' in German. So that's why we have a masculine article to it. But that's what I invite you to do. Become playful. Play with the air when you inhale it, see where it goes into your body. Where can you invite it to stay a little longer? What little area can fill it out? How can you let freshness come into your body and invigorate you so you can move better, you can walk more upright.
You don't have a slump, right? It is this huge interplay now that we have to go into conversation with each other to create what we really desire. That is going to bring the change instead of others letting dictate how we build. And if you're in the government, you have a chance to do that, to loosen maybe some regulations. So creative impulses can create change or set intention on meditate. We can focus and send out our desires. But first, what can you create better for you? Take a breath to feel the world, to communicate with the world as you send it back out the air.
00:18:48 - Meilin Ehlke
And how can you use your hands to create a difference and make our world again really beautiful, harmonious. Be in relationship that is nourishing with each other.
Wise sacred words channeled.
So there are many old ways we have neglected. And how can be they looked at, reintegrated, improved on to bring that sparkle, that freshness, that airiness back into alive. And now the wind is gone. Moving a door inside of my house didn't bang against each other, but movement just happened. That means we are on the right track. Thank you for this beautiful wisdom. Thank you for listening. And I'm happy you're here because I know you are a creator and you desire to create beauty for yourself, for me and the world. The best of luck. I am Meilin, your host of the Moving to Oneness podcast. Bye bye.